Kitchen Nightmares and Disasters

This article shares some of the scariest kitchen renovation nightmare stories. Read before starting on your kitchen remodeling project.

We've collected some of the most prevalent kitchen nightmare topics and have compiled them into a list, for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully they will serve as useful information to help you avoid kitchen disasters.

1. "I installed my kitchen cabinets, after I put in my marble countertops. A row of cabinets accidentally fell on the marble, badly cracking countertop!"

2. "I had a great new years party, felt lazy and didn't want to clean up. Left opened bottles and glasses of wine on white marble countertop overnight; thought it was stain proof."

3. "My husband was away on an extended business trip and I decided to surprise him by replacing our outdated cabinets. In the demolition process, the kitchen designers came across a hidden stash of videos, which changed my whole perspective on my husband."

4. "We were installing a center island in our kitchen, until a weak flooring structure and studs decided that the basement would be a better place."

5. "I bought what I thought was Absolute Black granite countertops until a few weeks later, I noticed that my hands contained black paint after leaning on the counter."

6. "We paid our contractor 50% upfront for our new kitchen makeover, and after showing up for the first week, we never saw him again."

7. "We decided to hold my daughter's wedding reception at our home, and no sooner had I placed the massive wedding cake (which took two days to prepare) on the kitchen table, when the chandelier fell directly on the center. There was cake everywhere, it was completely ruined."

8."I love big bay windows, and I've always wanted one in my kitchen. We installed one last year that covers most of our kitchen wall, and which overlooks our neighbor's pretty yard. We spent most of our time in the kitchen and it's very lovely, especially in the morning when many types of birds gather and frolic. But my dream turned into a nightmare recently when our neighbor, who is in his mid sixties, single and morbidly obese decided to put in a large hot tub in the back yard. Last month, he started hosting hot tub parties, which now appear to be happening every weekend. At about the same time, I started having really bad nightmares, which haven't stopped."

9. "We decided to paint the walls of our kitchen this year, and hired our babysitter's brother, who is very handy and an excellent painter. Unfortunately, he also supplements his income by walking dogs in the neighborhood, which he decided to do while on our project. Somehow no less than four dogs escaped his clutches and decided to take a thorough tour of our large home. Salmon-colored dog prints littered every nook and cranny of our house for days afterwards."

10. "When it came to ordering our flooring, I decided on wood and asked our contractor, an immigrant with a heavy accent, to look into wood flooring options for us." The next day we have 400 square feet of wool carpeting stacked outside our kitchen. He thought we said "wool."

Bob Fischer writes for Kitchen Designs Remodeling, which features inspirational kitchen ideas. Mr. Fischer focuses primarily on stories about compelling kitchen pictures.